For the past few weeks, I've been testing Hideman - a VPN solution with a feature set I've been seeking for a very long time. I've been using both Android and Windows apps to test the service, and let me tell you - it is everything I was hoping it would be and then some.

Good news, basketball fans. Google has been gradually upgrading the Now service to include a wider range of sports teams, and today Division I NCAA basketball teams from all over the US can be manually added to your personal Now results. Go into the Google Now settings page, tap "Sports," and search for your favorite school. Only basketball is supported at the moment - here's hoping that football teams are added before the season starts.

The CyanogenMod team has been hard at work building CM10.1 for various devices over the last several weeks, with new devices getting official builds almost daily. Yesterday, we saw 10.1 hit AT&T and T-Mobile's versions of the Galaxy Note and AT&T's S II Skyrocket; today, the first nightly just landed for T-Mo's Galaxy S II, as well.

The device, codenamed Hercules, differs from the rest of the S II family, as it has a Qualcomm processor instead of the Exynos of the other variants.

If you're in the market for a new smartphone, Verizon's pixel-packing Droid DNA is hard to beat. It offers a whopping 440PPI in its 5" 1920x1080 display, along with a quad-core Qualcomm S4 Pro and 2GB of RAM under the hood. Top all that off with Android 4.1.1, and you have an absolute monster of a phone.

But if you want to get all that and save a bit of cash, Wirefly has your number So long as you're willing to sign a new two-year agreement with Verizon right now, you can grab the DNA for $50.

Yes, we know - the Nexus 4 is still thin on the ground basically everywhere. (Americans, both the 8GB and 16GB versions are currently shown as "ships in 2-3 weeks" on the Play Store.) Even so, the LG flagship is the logical showpiece for Google Now, and it's doing some fine service in Google's latest mobile search ad. This one shows off Now's ability to automatically bring up contextual information for your time or location.

If you're headed to Houston next weekend for the NBA All-Star Game, do yourself a favor and download the official app. It functions as both an event guide and a nifty preview, for those NBA fans who can't make it to the game. What's surprising about the All-Star app is that it's really, really well-done: there's a ton of free content, the interface roughly follows Holo guidelines, and it's available to everyone.

Handy volume control app Silence got a nice update today to version 2.0. The update, besides introducing a new (holo) interface, adds a ton of new functionality. So much, in fact, that the app's functionality now overshadows its simple name.

For starters, the update adds Google Calendar integration (for Android 4.0+), and support for recurring events, each with their own volume profile. Users can configure the events to repeat until a given date, and the app can control notification, media, and alarm volumes with individual levels for each.

PushBullet, the dynamic, practical push notification app we included in our top five roundup yesterday got a nice update today. The update brings the app to version 8 and introduces a feature that makes it even more awesome – the ability to push to others' devices or have them push to your own.

You might be wondering why this is such an awesome feature. Well, today's post to the PushBullet blog explains that with a few examples: users can push each other the address to a new restaurant, a quick grocery list update, a cheerful image, or use sharing to "Rickroll your friends in a new and exciting way."

Sharing devices with other PushBullet users is easy – just head to your online dashboard at PushBullet.com and hit the "Share" button next to a device.

Still toting the original Galaxy Note? Still tired of the saturated colors of TouchWiz and an outdated version of Android? CyanogenMod's download center holds some good news for you, then. The Galaxy Note's AT&T and T-Mobile (US) variants got their first official CyanogenMod 10.1 nightlies today, just under a month after its younger brother, the Galaxy Note II.

Of course, like any other CM10.1 nightlies, these will bring your device closer to a true Android experience, while also offering the enhancements, customization, and features we've grown to expect from the CyanogenMod team.

In the last year, we've seen a lot of great Android phones - like the Galaxy S III, Note II, One X, RAZR M, or the upcoming Xperia Z. There's little doubt that with every major handset release, we're seeing Android phone manufacturers up their collective 'game.' But way back when (you know, a couple years ago), the fact that Android phones generally weren't always good was a big draw to a Nexus handset for me personally.